Has Community Beer really only been around for 365 days? It feels like a lot longer than that, but I suppose that's testament to the incredibly fast-growing North Texas brew scene. Attending their party inside their fancy brewery on Saturday, I was amazed at how many adherents the brewery already has. The place was slammed, packed to the rafters, and there was barely any room for the bars Community has installed.
I'm not here to tell you how good Community Beer is, though. You probably know that if you've tried a Mosaic IPA. I'm here to tell you that their new Ascension Coffee Porter, a marriage made in liquid heaven for local food types, is fucking magical, if you'll excuse my language. Aside from how good it is, I'm hoping that they take the quote "fucking magical" and use it to promote this particular beer. That would make an excellent poster.
Currently only available in their brewery taproom, Gods be cursed, the Ascension Coffee Porter tastes exactly like coffee. Exactly. If you've had an Ascension cold brew, that strong and bitter wake-up call, you've had this beer, only this beer is 6.8 percent alcohol. It's the only beer I've ever wanted to put ice in and then drink at 7am. Some beers might taste a bit like coffee, or have a coffee-like aftertaste. Not this beer. This beer is more coffee than 90 percent of the coffees you can buy.
Really, this beer solves two problems. One, sometimes I need my early morning coffee to blot out both the previous night and the horrors of the coming day. This coffee beer can do that. Two, sometimes I need my beer to wake me up by tasting exactly like strong cold brew coffee. I'm sure you'll all agree that it's actually a crime against humanity that this beer isn't already available from the taps in my house.
On Saturday, I had enough tickets for four of the specialty "rare" beers that Community were putting out. I used two of those tickets on the same coffee beer, twice. It was that good. It should be pointed out at this juncture that, like with everything else, I am no expert here. Jesse and Scott were busy, so you're stuck with muggins here. I can say, however, that in my opinion this beer could heal a country divided between caffeine addiction and alcoholism.
Not only is this coffee beer hopefully soon to launch in bars around Dallas, I hear from my esteemed colleague LDD that Deep Ellum Brewing Co. have a coffee beer made with the cold brew from Oak Cliff Coffee Roasters, and that it is similarly worthy of superlatives. That beer launches around Dallas today, according to Pegasus News, but will be a strictly limited release. It's my hope that, by the end of the week, we can get the two beers side by side early on a cold January morning and do some serious testing.